Motor vehicles include doors that provide access to a passenger compartment and/or a storage compartment in the vehicle. A motor vehicle door is typically a door assembly formed from such components as a main frame, an outer door skin affixed to one side of the main frame and an inner door panel affixed to an opposite side of the main frame. “Beltline” reinforcements may be used to strengthen the door assembly transversely along the bottom edge of the window, i.e. the “beltline.” Additional bracketry is often utilized to support such accessories as lamp housings, wiper mechanisms and the like. But, such bracketry requires additional tooling and, therefore, adds tooling and manufacturing costs to the design. It, therefore, remains desirable to minimize the number of components in the design by integrating such bracketry with the main structural components of the door assembly, such as the inner panel or belt line reinforcement.
Additionally, some vehicle manufacturers utilize a standard metal press tool size across their various vehicle programs to reduce overall manufacturing costs. Using a standard metal press tool size, however, limits the depth of parts that can be produced with the standard tools. It is also, therefore, desirable to provide a rear door design with components that can be produced from subcomponents formed in a single pressing operation and assembled together in a subsequent assembly operation.